SL_aquarium252250x010_2-07-2006_San Diego, CA._ Thirteen-month-old Dylan Louise Bunyak draws her share of attention from fish native to Mexican waters at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. At right is her father Steve Bunyak from Cardiff-by-the-Sea. SCOTT LINNETT/San Diego Union-Tribune

SL_aquarium252250x010_2-07-2006_San Diego, CA._ Thirteen-month-old Dylan Louise Bunyak draws her share of attention from fish native to Mexican waters at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. At right is her father Steve Bunyak from Cardiff-by-the-Sea. SCOTT LINNETT/San Diego Union-Tribune

There are milestones in each of our lives. Things like birthdays and anniversaries, births and weddings. Important markers that we pause to celebrate.

The same is true for institutions such as the University of California San Diego, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

This is convocation day in La Jolla, in which the school formally welcomes new students to campus. A highlight will be tonight’s dinner featuring alumnus Dileep Rao, an actor in films that include “Avatar” and “Inception.”

This convocation marks the start of a celebration that will continue, off and on, through June. Tonight, attendees will pause to reflect on a campus that has emerged as one of the nation’s top research schools.

Here are milestones in UCSD’s history:

1903

UC Berkeley zoology professor William E. Ritter founds the Marine Biological Association of San Diego, which becomes part of the University of California in 1912 and is renamed the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1925.

1956

San Diego voters approve donating 40 to 50 acres of city-owned pueblo lands for a University of California campus adjacent to Scripps in La Jolla. They approve donating an additional 400 acres in 1958. The total grows to 1,200 acres with the 1964 transfer of the Marine Corps’ Camp Matthews.

1958

Nobel Prize laureate Harold Urey moves from the University of Chicago to La Jolla, signaling UCSD’s plans to attract star faculty and their graduate students to the new campus. One of the first buildings on campus is later named Urey Hall.

September 1960

The first graduate students enroll at new departments housed at Scripps. On Nov. 18, UC regents name the campus “University of California San Diego” (previously it was called UC La Jolla). Herbert York is named first chancellor in 1961.

1964

The first undergraduates enroll at the first of six colleges, named for Roger Revelle, the Scripps director who spearheaded UCSD’s creation. The founding class holds a “watermelon drop” in the spring following a physics final and thus creates the campus’ first and longest-lasting tradition.

1968

The School of Medicine welcomes its first students.

1968-69

Chancellor William McGill renews Marxist philosophy professor Herbert Marcuse’s contract amid growing opposition to the Vietnam War, culminating in student George Winne’s self-immolation death in Revelle Plaza in May 1970. Also that year, Central Library (now Geisel Library) is completed and becomes UCSD’s most recognized landmark. It is featured in alumnus and future politician Steve Peace’s 1978 movie, “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.”

1979

San Diego’s first biotechnology company, Hybritech, is started by Ivor Royston, an untenured assistant professor, and his research assistant Howard Birndorf. Faculty and alumni have since spun off nearly 200 local companies, including more than one-third of the region’s biotechnology companies.

1982

The Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts opens, used by the theater and dance department during the academic year and La Jolla Playhouse in the summer.

1987

Alumnus Susumu Tonegawa wins the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the genetic mechanism that produces antibody diversity.

Chancellor Richard Atkinson is promoted to UC president. His successor, Robert Dynes, later rises to the top UC post.

1998

The School of Engineering is renamed the Jacobs School of Engineering for Qualcomm co-founder and former engineering professor Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan. They donate $110 million to UCSD in 2003.

2008

The UCSD libraries become the first library system in Southern California to partner with Google in its global effort to digitize the collections of the world’s top libraries.

2010

For the first time, UCSD obtains $1 billion in research contracts and grants during a single fiscal year.